Abstract
Sandwich structures are commonly used in many branches of modern engineering, such as aerospace or naval constructions. In this work, a vibration analysis of such structures is performed with the use of an anlytical model based on a zig-zag hypothesis. Due to the assumed periodic microstructure, which may occure in any layer of the structure, the initial governing equations describing its dynamic behaviour may contain periodic, non-continuous coefficients. The main aim of the presented paper is to show an analytical solution to the issue of the vibration analysis of the mentioned structures. With the use of the tolerance averaging technique, the initial governing equations are transformed to the form with constant coefficients, which is convenient to solve using well-known mathematical methods. The derived model is a versatile solution for any type of periodically inhomogeneous sandwich plate, including sandwich plates with a honeycomb core. Eventually, in the calculation example, the application of the derived averaged model in the analysis of vibrations of such structures is presented and discussed. The convergence of results of the tolerance model and FEM analysis proves the correctness and superiority of the proposed solution.